Krull (1983, Peter Yates)

From the director of Breaking Away and one of the many fine writers of the Adam West “Batman” TV show….

Krull is just as unwatchable now as it was the last time I tried to watch it, some eleven years ago.

As a kid—assuming kids are the best audience for the film—Krull never registered as something I might want to watch. Finding anything to say about it is difficult. It’s an object lesson, I suppose, in how not to direct for Panavision. Yates is about as incapable of directing an action sequence as one would imagine Woody Allen would be directing one. The opening alone is painful.

It’s unclear what successful fantasy film the makers were trying to capitalize on—it’s not a Star Wars knockoff, for example. Wait… it’s knights with laser-swords versus some kind of Stormtrooper stand-ins. But these Stormtroopers don’t have a Death Star, they have a big rock. Krull might have actually kicked off the eighties fantasy genre—I fairly sure that genre produced anything of any value. At least not the straight, non-comedy influenced genre pictures.

Also amusing is James Horner’s score, which is entirely—well, maybe not entirely, but heavily influenced by his Star Trek II and III scores. Actually, Star Trek III came out the following year so maybe Horner just reused the Krull bits in it.

Oddly, given the film’s incompetence, the outer space effects are solid.

Krull’s a punchline masquerading as a two-hour fantasy epic.

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CREDITS

Directed by Peter Yates; written by Stanford Sherman; director of photography, Peter Suschitzky; edited by Ray Lovejoy; music by James Horner; production designer, Stephen B. Grimes; produced by Ron Silverman; released by Columbia Pictures.